03/08/2014

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that we were not the only people to have bought garden furniture recently; or perhaps there’ve been a lot of cricket matches going on around here, but there must be something more than just one little patio table and a nice comfy chair to mean that the heavens opened as soon as the box. For all I was suffering in the heat, I’d forgotten how lovely it was to just throw open the doors and throw us out into the garden, or the play park or the splash pad or just outside anywhere.

I’ve loved July and all our sunshine adventures and I really hope that they aren’t over; a couple of days of torrential rain (and we’re talking rain storms that turned the hill in our village into a river and brought water pouring through our boiler flue and into the kitchen) have been more than enough!

But it did force me to come up with a rainy day plan that I rather love; and one I’m definitely repeating in the autumn – and any other time we need it – we made a rainy day road for our Duplo train.

We’d picked up one of those giant rolls of drawing paper from the children’s bit of IKEA on a trip to buy bookcases, because it is of course a rule of IKEA that you can’t go and buy just the thing you actually planned to buy, and it was just begging to be put to good use. So with the rain splattering down outside we pulled out a couple of metres off the roll and taped it to the hall floor; grabbed the crayons and set to.

I drew a nice long wiggly road with a roundabout at one end and then handed it over to the girls. And as we sat on the hall floor we added butterflies and flowers; a pond with some goldfish, and then another pond for the duck; a pony with Kitty and Elma on board, and last, but by no means, a beach.

The beach was Kitty’s idea; I asked her where the train was going, and that was the answer that came back, so we drew some sand and some sea; and then beach towels (as coloured in by Kit), a sun umbrella (ditto) and a few sandcastles.

And Elma toddled up and down our ‘road’ with her fire truck squeaking “nee nah nee nah” and colouring big scribbly stripes all over everything.

I’d thought it might occupy them for half an hour or so but we played with it for ages; and then when we came back later in the afternoon they immediately gravitated back to it; adding more colour, more scribbles and more flowers, and we were still sat there when H came home.

So if we’ve done a road, I’m thinking next time it might need to be a river, or perhaps an airport – any ideas?

Space for the Butterflies is…

A story of motherhood from a slightly hippy working mama who couldn't stop writing if she tried. It's my creativity, set out in fabric, yarn, and cake, our family memories and adventures and all the evidence you need that photography is addictive.
Hi, I'm Carie, welcome to the story so far...